Depth
by g0 w1th th3 fl0w
Summary: She's a human with low self-esteem, and he's a giant alien robot car with more self-esteem than his currently-being-hunted-by-the-DJD status warrants. What happens when Kelsey Callahan fixes up a car that isn't what it seems? Animated, with elements of other continuities.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Sooo I saw an interesting idea floating around the Internet a few months ago (Tumblr, I think) of Knock Out befriending a human with very little of their own self-confidence. I cannot for the life of me remember who posited the idea in the first place, but credit to them for inspiring this fic.

This is going to be set in the Animated universe (around the beginning of Season 2), but with characters and elements from other continuities.

On with the show! R&R, if you please :)

* * *

He was really starting to regret this whole 'defecting' thing; it was a lot more trouble than it was worth. Never mind that he was now in _Swindle's_ debt for giving him the tip-off that the DJD were sniffing around the quadrant for him, he was sure that every Cybertronian force conceivable was after him at this point.

He was currently sat askew in the 'captain's' chair, in the midst of deciding which of this galaxy's planets would be optimal for a (hopefully) brief stint while trying to evade capture by either faction. All of the ship's scanners were indicating that the green and blue planet he was approaching was the most suitable candidate; there were lifeforms living there with technology compatible with a smooth adoption of a vehicular disguise. Unfortunately, said lifeforms were coming up on scanners as organic. As was typical of most Cybertronians, the thought of a planet teeming with organic life perturbed him slightly – but then again, all things considered, the thought of the DJD perturbed him even more.

"Well, hopefully this mudball will be enough."

Setting the ship's autopilot back to manual, he rotated and assumed correct posture in the (admittedly) large chair, and grabbed hold of the steering column that rose from the dashboard. Tentatively testing out the steering as he approached the outer limits of the planet's atmosphere, he couldn't help but shudder slightly; he was no pilot, and this ship was hardly top-of-the-range anymore. It was an old mid-War thing, considerably older than himself, with only a second edition Teletraan system. Some would call it a classic, but its occupant began cursing the thing as the descent through the atmosphere got rather more bumpy than he anticipated.

Armour plating rattling, he gripped the steering column with all his strength, desperately trying to land anywhere other than the vast swathes of water on the planet's surface. Unfortunately, by the time he had reached the planet's stratosphere, the ship began blaring alarm sounds. Panelling was beginning to come loose from the front of the ship as it reached astronomical temperatures, and sensors were starting to go offline as a result of the rising heat. Barely giving any time to analyse any other potential courses of action in his processor, he decided to heed the ship's warning to [ENTER STASIS POD NOW. IMPACT IMMINENT].

Diving into the nearest pod, he quickly activated it. The planet's surface was coming closer and closer, and the last thing he saw before stasis took over was the shop hurtling past a small settlement, thankfully levelling out its trajectory as the ground got even closer. Not typically much of a religious mech, he found himself muttering to every deity he could think of, praying that his uncanny ability to get out of scrapes wouldn't fail him now. Then blackness consumed.

* * *

It was official; she was an idiot. Kelsey, despite being ever-self-deprecating, would generally consider herself a competent individual; her grades spoke for themselves, and even her mechanical skills were steadily increasing. However, it was at this moment, as she stared at the heavily damaged vehicle in front of her, that she was seriously starting to reconsider. She was never usually one to bite off more than she could chew, preferring to stay well within her limits. But she had been _so_ convinced at the scrapyard that the car in front of her - no doubt at one time a very sleek, red example of a sports car - would be the beginnings of her magnum opus. _This_ would have been the chance to prove to her father (but mainly herself) that she was worthy of taking over the family business. She had paid exactly five hundred dollars for it, a little pricy for her, but there was definitely the potential to return it to working order. Then she lifted the hood. Kicking herself for being so hasty in her purchase, she gripped the skin of her arm tight enough to leave a mark.

"Great! It's a freaking custom. Just brilliant. I can't even tell what the hell kind of custom it is. Great. Nice one, Kel."

Slamming the hood back down with a grunt, she stormed out of the garage and back into the house. The modest wooden structure shuddered with the force of her door slam, and her father looked up from his digital newspaper, "Any luck with the new car?"

Kelsey regarded him briefly, before slumping her shoulders and starting to make her way upstairs, "No. It's a custom. A weird one. I'll have to think about how to deal with it."

"Shame." He went back to his newspaper, not bothering to look back at his daughter again, "You have oil all over your face, by the way."

Pursing her lips, Kelsey continued up the stairs. Her father shrugged, but didn't take his eyes off the paper.

As soon as Kelsey headed upstairs, she made for the bathroom. She wet the corner of a towel and wiped the oil pockmarking her face. She then stood there, evaluating herself in the mirror. Her dark circles were getting worse, and her short, mousey hair was getting to an awkward length. Resigned, she trooped back to her room and got changed into cleaner clothes. Sweatpants weren't the most flattering outfit in the world, but then again, she didn't feel like much flattered her anyway. She flopped onto her bed, accidentally crushing some schoolwork in the process, before she threw it on the floor lackadaisically; the room was already a mess, she conceded, so a few more bits of paper wouldn't make a difference. She lay back, mulling over the car currently sitting in her garage. The guy at the yard said he'd found it near some farmland. Having made some enquiries, he couldn't find an owner, so took it back to his yard. All Kelsey knew was that the owner must've been on hell of a mechanic. The car's damage would suggest a rather serious crash, so it wasn't unlikely that the thing was capable of some speed.

As she let her arm dangle off the edge of the bed, her hand brushed the schoolwork she'd wantonly thrown on the floor. _'Just another thing to worry about later.'_

Her grades were very good, to the point that the careers officer in the school suggested she try out at some engineering courses at the University of Michigan once she graduated next year. After all, employers such as Sumdac Systems were looking for bright young minds such as hers. She would be lying if she said the idea wasn't appealing to her, but she could never bring herself to tell her parents. From the day she was born, it seemed, her father was keen for her to take over the family mechanic business. Admittedly a dying art in the Robotics Age, the folk of rural Michigan were thankfully still keen to use their services.

"Kelsey! Dinner!" Came a shout from downstairs.

"Coming, Mom."

Slinking downstairs towards the kitchen she walked past her mother. Melissa Callahan retained a youthful beauty about her despite her often frantic job of owning a local diner, and Kelsey couldn't help but envy the care she put into her appearance.

"The pasta is on the counter. I'm heading out with the gals tonight, so I'll probably see you in the morning." She planted a kiss on her daughter's head, before grabbing her house keys and putting them in her purse, "See you later, sweetie!"  
With the slam of the door, she went to seek out her pasta. Claiming her prize from the counter, she walked past her father, who was by now preparing to head out to fix his own cars up.

"Hey Dad," she asked quickly, "could you maybe have a look at mine? The engine is crazy, and I wanna know what you think."

Her father chuckled. Never let it be said that Jon Callahan wasn't one for encouraging his daughter to problem solve for herself, "Nah, I reckon you're perfectly able to do it yourself. Just go upstairs and chew it over while eating your pasta. That car's your baby, after all. I know you'll get it." With a wink and a chuckle at his own pun, he headed out of the door.

Alone in the house, Kelsey rolled her eyes skywards and resignedly headed upstairs.

* * *

"That's strange."

Optimus Prime regarded his teammate with a look of curiosity, "What is, Prowl?"

The team's ninja pointed to some of the data that was coming up on their base's computer screen, "Satellite reports indicate an object crash landed in rural Michigan three weeks ago, about ten miles outside of the city boundary. We're only just getting the data now, of course, but don't you think it's odd there weren't any local news reports at the time about a small object hitting the area? Normally these satellite reports merely corroborate local news outlets."

Optimus mulled this over, "Indeed. Well, we'll have to keep an optic on it. It doesn't look large enough to be a Cybertronian ship or anything."

The discussion was halted upon their human ally and her yellow companions came careening into the main room, whooping as they went.

Seeing Prowl about to storm off to the sanctity of his room, Optimus quickly intercepted him, "As I was saying, it's probably nothing. But it's our responsibility to exercise caution, especially now that Megatron's active again, and we have the AllSpark fragments to worry about."

Prowl gave a terse nod, before inclining his helm at the base's younger occupants in such as way hat Optimus was convinced he was rolling his optics under his visor.

"What's that on the screen? A new fragment? A new Decepticon I need to kick the butt of?" Bumblebee punctuated this outlandish suggestion with some sloppy attempt at martial arts.

"Nothing you have to worry about, Bumblebee." Optimus said, noting that Prowl had already vacated the room.

As Bumblebee and Sari shrugged at each other and left to presumably go and terrorise someone else, Optimus decided that maybe it was time to reread some local news reports.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been almost a month since Kelsey had purchased her '_magnum opus',_ and she was making steady progress in fixing it up. She convinced herself that she was merely giving herself more time to think over the engine issue by completing the bodywork first, and that no, this wasn't at all procrastination.

She had done a good job of the bodywork, she had to admit to herself. The sleek red lines and gold detailing were taking shape, and from the outside at least, the car was looking almost as good as new. She had taken to patting the car after each round of detailing, but was trying to break the habit as it was costing her extra wax to cover her greasy handprints.

"Looking good, Red. If I do say so myself."

Yet another curious thing about this car, Kelsey soon realised, was the strength of its metal body. Trying to hammer out dents was considerably more difficult and physically tiring than on other cars, and more than once Kelsey found her tools accidentally bouncing off the metal and careering back towards her. This didn't particularly bother the girl, however, who had already come to terms with the fact that this car was something special, warranting such a high level of modification.

She had been working on her project almost every day after school, completing her homework before heading out to the garage until late into the evening. Her father loved that she was so vigorously embracing the challenge; her mother frowned at the near-constant presence of grease on her daughter's face.

This was Kelsey's main hobby though, and she wanted to enjoy _something_ before she had to start putting thought into revision for her finals. The garage was where she could be herself without having to care what other people thought. Here she wasn't just mousey little Kelsey, the girl who had been the school's '_quiet girl_' since she started kindergarten. Here she thrived.

Setting her tools down, she headed over to her 30th generation iPod to put on some music. Deciding on a playlist from the 1980s, she headed back over to the car. Yeah, the music was old, but she really needed motivation if she was going to actually go through with what she had planned for the car's mysterious engine.

The car's on/off button didn't like to work, she had realised early on. As such, if she wanted to get an idea of how the thing ticked, she was going to have to jumpstart it. It was no biggie - she had expected it from a car straight out of the junkyard.

Fetching the necessary leads, she lifted the hood.

"I hope this works. Otherwise I really have been talking to a dead hunk of metal for the past month." With no small amount of trepidation, she stood back at a safe distance and flicked the switch.

An electrical humming filled the garage as the jump-box powered up. Kelsey slunk into the driver's seat with the ignition fob, and was just about to reach for the ignition button when something happened.

The engine suddenly roared to life without her having pressed start. Flinging herself out of the car to inspect the engine, Kelsey froze as she heard an odd sound. The car seemed to split apart panel by panel. Time went in slow motion as she fell painfully onto her rear in shock as the thing before her grew taller, soon taking on a humanoid form. Transformation complete, the thing appeared to look frantic, glowing red eyes darting around the garage, before settling on her. It swiftly removed something from a compartment in its side, before telescoping it out into a spear of some form, which it then pointed menacingly in her general direction.

She screamed.

Weapon clattering to the floor, the thing moved its clawed hands to clutch the sides of its head, as if covering its ears.

"Primus, I didn't know you went _supersonic_."

At this Kelsey stopped screaming and froze. The voice that came out of the thing was that of a man, although with an electronic tinge around the edges despite its smooth tone. She gaped.

The thing blinked at her, "Good, now that you've stopped, would you mind telling me what the frag you are?"

At her silence, he gave a prompting look, "You _do_ speak this language, don't you?"

She nodded, swallowing to lubricate her dry throat before practically whispering, "I'm a human."

The thing (he?) stood back slightly, "Oh good. Guess the stasis pod actually did its job in downloading the language of this area's dominant species."

"Y-you're one of those Autobots!" She squeaked. The whole world knew about the benevolent robotic aliens who now called Michigan their home. Of course, everyone now knew there was another, decidedly _less_ benevolent faction of these robots too, but she banished the thought from her mind. After all, weren't the bad guys all aeroplanes?

"Excuse me?" it spluttered, an eyebrow appeared to be raised, "Did you say '_Autobots_'? You have _Autobots_ here? Great. Wonderful."

She could tell the tone was, alamingly, not positive; she couldn't help but start babbling, "Y-you were a car. From a junkyard. You've never done this before."

"Yeess, I was a car. And-wait, did you say junkyard? Are you telling me that I was taken to a junkyard? Like _scrapmetal_? I really have reached a new low. Although," a look of approval as freshly-polished plating sparkled in the fluorescent lighting, "I will say, you have done a _wonderful_ job of fixing me up. Almost as shiny as usual."

She gawked upwards, and it clearly felt the need to explain itself further lest she go into a full-out panic attack, "Let me introduce myself, seeing as you've done such a _wonderful_ job of fixing me up. I'm Knock Out. Cybertronian medic. And you are?"

"K-Kelsey Callahan."

"Well Kelsey Callahan, I have a favour to ask. You said there are Autobots on this planet, correct? Well, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't mention my existence to anyone. You see, I'm kinda not in the Autobots' good books right now - that's the correct expression, right? - anyway, I came to this planet to try and get away from politics. I'm going to drive away now, and you'll probably never see me again, so don't worry your pretty little head about me, got it?"

Taken aback by being described as _pretty, _even in the laconic tone that Knock Out was using, she nodded blithely.

"Good, well, I'd best be on my wa-" Knock Out stumbled back suddenly and clutched his head, as if suddenly dizzy, "Ughh frag," he groaned, "I came out of stasis too quickly." He quickly spotted the jump leads and looked at Kelsey accusingly, "Did you use those things to _jumpstart me_?"

Finding her footing again, Kelsey cleared her throat, "Well yeah. You weren't gonna start yourself, and your engine is so heavily modded it didn't know what else to do except to jumpstart you and see how you ticked."

A perfectly logical answer, Knock Out had to concede, but not ideal in his circumstances, "New plan: I stay here for a few more solar cycles to calibrate my processor properly, _then_ I'll leave you be." He was a medic, and he'd be damned if he ruined his processor by neglecting rule number one in the stasis handbook, especially when there were apparently Autobots prowling the area.

"O-ok." Kelsey was visibly shaking, but Knock Out didn't seem to care.

He lowered himself down into a sitting position, placing his head in one hand - an oddly human gesture - and locked eyes with her, "Now, tell me about these Autobots..."

* * *

The Autobots had meanwhile been swept off their feet by various goings-on in Detroit. Tensions were high, and the more surly members of the crew were running low on morale. They'd been dealing with new Cybertronian Wreck-Gar - and _wasn't that a thrill - _and Optimus had had little time to devote to chasing up the odd satellite data.

"Man, I'm so tired."

Optimus turned his head to see that Bulkhead had entered the room, a servo clasped to his helm as if he were in the midst of a processor ache (not an unreasonable suggestion - Ratchet's frayed nerves meant his wrench-throwing hand was itchy), before he sat down on the great concrete 'sofa'.

"I'm sure we'll experience a lull in activity soon, what with the Elite Guard back on Cybertron." Optimus hummed. Truth be told, even rampaging garbage trucks provided a lesser source of stress than his superiors' overbearing presence.

"When do you think the Cons'll show up again?" Bulkhead asked, motioning to turn the giant television on.

Optimus winced at the blaring commercial that emanated from the TV, but Bulkhead didn't notice.

"Hopefully not for a while." _Hopefully not until I've managed to have at least one decent solar cycle's rest._

The base was admittedly quiet today, with Prowl having taken Sari and Bumblebee to some nature reserve over in Illinois. Ratchet meanwhile was in his medbay, having not emerged for the past day and a half due to an apparently achy battle scar. Even back in possession of his EMP generator, that part of his arm still had a tendency to ache when, as he delicately put it "_slag is about to hit the fan_". How comforting.

Trying to convince himself that this was nothing but superstition on behalf of their medic, Optimus turned back to the police footage he was trawling through. Wreck-Gar had caused a significant amount of collateral damage, and the Prime had volunteered to help the police assess the situation.

"Hey, do you think all the Decepticons around the cosmos know Megatron's back online?" Bulkhead suddenly asked, casually reclining as he watched a rerun of _America's Funniest Home Videos._

"I suppose so." Optimus replied, not even looking up from the computer screen he was focussing on, "I imagine his senior officer have sent out an official communication."

"Do you think they'll join him here?"

Optimus paused, turning to Bulkhead, "I certainly hope not."

Satisfied, Bulkhead shrugged his mammoth shoulders and turned back to the TV.

Optics lingering on the TV for a second, Optimus turned back to his own screen. He had paperwork to sort out.


End file.
